In accordance with the prior art, electro-optical properties of optoelectronic components are usually measured by applying a DC voltage to the optoelectronic component. Occasionally, optoelectronic components are present at least temporally in a form in which their connections are short-circuited, that is to say in which there is a negligible ohmic resistance between their connections. This is the case particularly if optoelectronic components are arranged on a connection carrier, for example, during the production of optoelectronic components. By way of example, optoelectronic components are mounted in a metallic leadframe, as a result of which the contacts of the optoelectronic components are short-circuited with respect to DC voltages. Consequently, these cannot be operated with DC current in order to determine their electro-optical properties for the purpose of process monitoring and/or process control.
While the optoelectronic components are singulated and provided with individually contactable connections at the end of the production process, it may be advantageous that the components are not yet singulated and/or not yet made individually contactable at least during substeps of the production process. However, it is desirable to be able to measure electro-optical properties of the optoelectronic components even in such a state, for example, in order to presort or to optimize the optoelectronic components and/or in order to adapt further production steps to the measured electro-optical properties. As a result, the rejects are reduced, thus affording a saving of time and costs.
In particular, the time required by the lengthy production steps such as the curing of a conversion material, for example, can be better utilized. During the production of light emitting diodes, for example, light emitting diodes which emit white light on the basis of volume conversion, the concentration and filling quantity of the conversion material are subject to fluctuations of varying magnitudes on account of current production methods. At the present time, in the manner of random sampling, an optoelectronic component is singulated and measured after the potting and baking of the material and can no longer be used for further production steps such as a plating step, for example.
It is known, for exciting optoelectronic components arranged on a connection carrier, to singulate the optoelectronic components at an early stage in the production process or at least to separate their short-circuited contacts and subsequently to make electrical contact with them. What is disadvantageous in this case is that separate contacts, in particular contacts protruding from the connection carrier and/or exposed contacts, can lead to mechanical problems, for example, instances of jamming and remain excluded from some production steps, for example, a plating step.